Impact of Farmers’ Associations on Household Income: Evidence from Tea Farms in Vietnam

Hung Van Vu, Huong Ho and Quoc Hoi Le
Additional contact information
Hung Van Vu: Faculty of Political Theory, Thuongmai University, Hanoi 100000, Vietnam
Huong Ho: Faculty of Politics, Vietnam Youth Academy, Hanoi 100000, Vietnam
Quoc Hoi Le: Journal of Economics and Development, National Economics University, Hanoi 100000, Vietnam

Economies, 2020, vol. 8, issue 4, 1-16

Abstract: Farmers’ associations play an important role to help members increase their access to supports of information, capital, and technology; bring benefits to members; and partly promote production, enhance productivity, and increase income. This paper systematizes the theoretical foundation and empirical evidence on income difference between the member and non-member farmers and identifies factors that affect their decisions to join associations. By comparing specific characteristics between the member and non-member farmers, the paper examines the impact of joining farmers’ associations on the income of tea farmers in Vietnam by using the data from the survey of 742 farms. In our sample, 376 respondents are members and 366 non-members of associations in the four largest tea-producing areas, which cover 30 provinces in Vietnam. The paper uses OLS regression model to identify the factors that influence the decision of tea farms to join farmers’ organizations and tobit model to assess more detailed impacts of membership on income. The findings show that the farmers, who are members of an association, are more helpful in the ability to access better market services and more tea prices, and are more likely to earn a higher average income than those are non-members. Moreover, their memberships result in an increase of 0.166 unit of income. The research results also show that other factors, including labor, tea price, share of tea sold, farmer age, tea area, ability to access extension services, and credit services, affect the farmer’s income.

Keywords: membership; OLS; tobit; Vietnamese Tea Association (VITAS) (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E F I J O Q (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/8/4/92/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2227-7099/8/4/92/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jecomi:v:8:y:2020:i:4:p:92-:d:434854

Access Statistics for this article

Economies is currently edited by Ms. Hongyan Zhang

More articles in Economies from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().